A recorded conversation (YouTube video uploaded Sept 5, 2023) led by Josh Trent with participants Luke and Cal exploring why evil and suffering exist. Speakers argue from nondual/spiritual perspectives: that God/Consciousness expresses itself as all possibilities (good and evil) so that it can experience itself, that suffering and evil function as contrast in an "Earth school" enabling soul growth, and that personal wounds can be sources of service (‘wounded healer’). Biblical citation (Isaiah 45:7) is invoked to support the claim that God creates light and darkness. Tone is reflective, metaphysical, and consolatory.
Chapters
If God wants to experience God's self in all forms, then in some way the abuse was an act of God, otherwise it wouldn't have occurred. And there's an ultimate mystery there that is a beginning path for peace. I'm not saying you have to be at peace with it right away, but just knowing that there is a grand mystery to this universe and the meaning that Luke made, where if the things didn't occur in the way they occurred, he wouldn't be able to hold people in meditation, he wouldn't be able to be a podcaster, he wouldn't be able to be of service. And the cap is, you know, I think about John Wineland losing his daughter, and he said, well, my wound is where I serve from. That's where I serve from. That's the ultimate meaning of the mystery. And we are meaning making machines that we can take some solace in and begin the peaceful path.
You, you just solved the. The atheist biggest gripe, which is, if there's a God, why does evil exist?
Well, it makes sense, but this is.
I always got to bring it back to Bufo and you know, sorry, bring.
It back to Bufo, Bring it in.
Bring in the reptile.
I mean, to have to have even a brief experience of. Of true non duality, right, where you're really not there anymore in the sense of being a single expression of consciousness. You're just in the great scheme and web of omniscient consciousness, right? In those moments, on multiple occasions I've had. And it's something that I've carried out of that experience and integrated is really seeing that. And it makes it so trite to even try to describe it or talk about it. So it's embarrassing because it's like if you've been there, you've been there. I guess I just have to own it. It's not like I went there, I was taken there. But in terms of like, why does evil exist? This was such a fucking huge relief to me, okay? If God is this eternal everythingness, right? It's just everything all at once, which is kind of what the experience of Bufo and I'm sure other potential human experiences have. Imagine that all there is is you, and there's no other. So therefore you can't experience yourself because there has to be other, right? So in order for God or consciousness or creation to have the experience of itself, it weaves this vast tapestry of such a broad spectrum of what we perceive in the world of duality to be good and evil, dark and light, right? It expresses itself as everything, every potentiality, all at once, including the pedophile and the serial killer and the rapist and the mass murderer, the Mao's, the Hitlers, the Stalins. It experiences itself as all of that. And to Josh's point, so that's all God. So you can't take anything out and go, okay, this is good, this is evil, and the good is all God, and the evil is not. If it's experiencing itself in that way. The gift that, that provides us is this broad spectrum of consciousness as an incarnated soul, where we have this school with this depth and width that allows us, through our karmic propensities, some of us are driven more toward one end of that dualistic expression than the other. But imagine what a gift it is to be in a world where we have the potential to be the most depraved evil perpetrator of harm and destruction all the way up to the angelic realms of a mystic. And. And you can do that if your karmic propensity leads you to that in one fucking lifetime. I mean, most people, we probably don't, but the potential. The potential is there, right? Like, meaning the world doesn't need to change. We don't need to eradicate evil because it's set up perfectly as an Earth school. And if we didn't have the opposite end of the spectrum and have evil, then there would be nothing to work with.
We would be in a contrast.
Yeah, we'd be in a celestial, angelic realm. And maybe those realms exist somewhere else. I have a feeling they do. But we volunteered and signed up to come here because we have that great expansive opportunity to progress. The world couldn't be more perfect. And that thing right there is what helps me with the pandemic and the pedophile rings and just all the crazy shit in the world that I think, I got to go out and change this. I have to save the world. I have to change the world, the environment. It's like, no, no, it's all exactly how it's supposed to be. How do I know that? Because it's the way it is. And if it wasn't that way, I wouldn't have the opportunity to grow. We would just all be at a single level. It's like if you wanted the world to be Utopia, it would be like being a postgraduate student going back to kindergarten. It would just be easy. And there'd be no opportunity for growth and expansion and elevation of consciousness. But since there's such a broad scope of consciousness, we get to play in there. And we accept the consequences of every little thought that we, that we have in every deed or act that comes out of that thought. And so then everything gets pared down to this. I'm sorry, this is my favorite topic.
It's like awesome.
Then everything gets pared down to this razor's edge.
Right.
So it's like I can monitor each thought, each feeling, each behavior, each word. Anything I do in this play of reality is going to have the consequence, the instantaneous karma loop of the decisions that I make and going back to like not closing my heart and punishing and ah. Ah. So this is the gift of free will. You wouldn't need free will if there were no choices. We have to be given choices. Therefore, where I'm arriving at this moment is that all of the evil in the world is supposed to be there and that God did in fact create it all. And there's nothing. There's nothing that's not God.
Yeah. And I think about when I imagine these angelic realms and we just live there. Well, okay, so that becomes the baseline. So it just is. And there is no contrast where we get to experience that real open heartedness. Like if that's all we did, that would become the default. And then we don't get to really have that experience. But one of the things that you were touching on, Josh, that I loved is this idea, and I brought it up before, about the wounded healer. I mean, that's the one who carries the real medicine. You get to share that with others, you know, and beyond that, what I really loved about what you shared is you took yourself out of victimhood and you took ownership of your life. Not that you, you know, called this in necessarily, but. But that you're able to.
Yeah, it's just like it's.
When we play victim, we're just at.
The world's mercy, totally powerless.
Yes, There is something to be said here too. You brought up the ancient Bible earlier and with what Cal and Luke just spoke about, it's already written in Isaiah 45:7. I learned this from my mentor Paul.
Yeah.
Isaiah 45:7. I, the Lord, create good and evil. I, the Lord, create light and darkness. I, the Lord, do all these things. Think about what's being said there. I might have butchered it a little bit. You can look in the new King James version. But the words, the energy of what I'm saying, whether I use perfect words or not, is there. If God, through God's word in the book that has been translated over millennia is saying, I, the Lord, create good and evil. I create light and darkness. And in Isaiah 45. 7. How could anyone with a Christian faith deny the fact that all is God, even the evil, if God, God self is saying that in the new King James version?
You know, it's like, if this mic wasn't on a stand, I would drop it for you. Yeah, beautiful. You know, it's this whole idea of projection.
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